Apparently, the right of free association doesn’t have the same respect at Vanderbilt University as it does in the rest of America.
The victims? Catholic groups who want to have Catholic members, all in the name of “diversity” of course:
“Theyre saying that religious can only be tolerated, frankly, if you dont really take it seriously – if you say, “Well, it doesnt really matter who leads our group, then religious can be tolerated.”
“But if you say, No, who we are as Catholics really is fundamental to what this organization is about, then you’re not welcome on campus.”
While Vanderbilt Catholic has chosen to move and change its name, 11 other student religious groups – acting under the name “Vanderbilt Solidarity” – have simply refused to change their statutes. On April 9, they registered with the school while keeping their previous faith requirements.Vanderbilt Catholic has not joined the campaign, and Fr. Baker is not aware of any official response from the university to the Solidarity groups non-compliant charter submissions.
Read the rest of the article from Catholic News Agency. Frankly, this is the sort of whitewashing of faith from the public square that secularists — in the name of pluralism — have really degraded themselves to an alien form of laicization.
Faith traditions deserve to be whole in order to participate in the public square. This sort of effort from Vanderbilt is wrong, wrong, wrong. I suspect they know this… but narrow viewpoints often don’t budge for wider ones. Hopefully the university lives up to the latter part of its vocation as a university rather than worrying about the Vanderbilt name.